


Right Where We Are

by chalantness



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Vague Optimistic Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-17 18:47:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18104282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chalantness/pseuds/chalantness
Summary: “It can’t be that important to save if we haven’t needed it yet,” she points out.He tilts his head. “There’s nothing wrong with being a little sentimental. I know the only thing you used to collect in your old apartment was dust, but—”“Alright, you ass,” she cuts him off, unable to keep from grinning as she shoves his shoulder, and he laughs as he heads back inside the house.





	Right Where We Are

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oceanicspirit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceanicspirit/gifts).



> "Nat would just lay on the opposite side of the couch while Steve sketches and she reads a book. Steve just turns the page and starts drawing Nat (because he can never have too many pictures of Nat in his sketchbook)." - a comment [by sassaspazz](http://chalantness.tumblr.com/post/183397677601/sassaspazz-chalantness-replied-to-your-post) that ended up being the inspiration I needed to write marshmallow fluff. Thanks, babe!

Neither of them had very many _things_ to pack up when they moved, but what little they’d decided to bring with them had been put into a few boxes and stacked in a corner of the garage to be dealt with later. Since they’d lived the better half of almost five years at the Avengers Facility, none of the furniture had come with them, and Tony insisted on having them pick things out of a catalogue to be delivered. Most of the morning had been spent instructing the movers on where everything would go, peeling off the plastic on their shiny new appliances and unboxing all of their new plates, and by the time evening had come around, all they’d wanted was to finish hanging their clothes in the closet so they could take a bath and have dinner in bed. Everything of importance had been unpacked, and they would get to those boxes in the garage eventually, Steve had promised.

Evidently, _eventually_ had finally come.

“You want to do that _today?_ ” Natasha asks from the kitchen table, watching as he rinses their dishes off from breakfast and loads them into the washer.

“They’ve been sitting there for months,” he points out with a laugh as he glances over at her, one eyebrow arched, and that teasing, boyish grin pulling at his lips. The morning light makes his hair seem lighter and his eyes _bluer_ —which is hardly _fair_ , all things considered.

She shrugs her shoulder, gulps the last of her coffee before standing and walking over to him. His hand is still wet when he reaches for her hip and tugs her to his chest, but she hardly cares. His eyes drop to her lips as she lets her tongue dart out to lick the taste of their coffee creamer off of her bottom lip, but when he leans in to do the same, she tilts away to set her mug in the sink. “Fucking tease,” he murmurs, his lips landing on her neck instead, just underneath the line of her jaw, and the hand at her hip squeezes gently.

She hums, smirking up at the ceiling. “I just figured you’d want to go outside now that it’s finally stopped raining.”

He chuckles against her skin, making her tingle from the soft vibrations and the tickle of his beard as he slides his lips upward, over the apple of her cheek.

“It won’t take us all day,” he points out, cupping her face with his hands, still wet with water and soap, and he grins when she makes a face at him. “We can bring them outside,” he adds, nodding his head toward the sliding door that leads into their backyard, out onto the white patio that she and Steve had spent an entire day repainting. Then he pulls back to glance over at the clock hanging on the wall. “Besides, we can’t really go anywhere until Pepper and Tony get here,” he points out, “so we’ve got a couple hours to kill.”

She’s smiling as she rolls her eyes, poking at his chest through his thin, white shirt. “ _Fine_. But since they’re almost all _your_ boxes, I think you should wait on me.”

“You act as if I don’t do that every day,” he retorts, laughing when she shoves him off of her and turns to walk away. “Nat?” She glances over her shoulder to find him grinning widely. “I love you.”

Her lips twitch. _God_ , he’s such a sap. “I love you, too.”

She knows she’s smiling to herself like an idiot as she heads up to their bedroom, but she couldn’t care less.

And because she knows the man she married, she knows that Steve will probably want to head out into the city with Pepper and Tony once they get here, because he always likes to take a walk when it’s warm enough. She changes out of her pajamas and into the white sundress that Steve had bought for her last month, “just because I thought you’d like it.” They never have a plan when they have the day to themselves like this, but it’s safe to assume Pepper will want to have lunch wherever they end up, and they’ll probably make their way to a park after a bit of shopping. She never thought she’d find herself with a day off, let alone spending it in such a simple, predictable way, but this is her life.

And she kind of _loves_ it.

She doesn’t feel like fussing with make-up today, so she runs a brush through her hair and leaves it down, then heads back downstairs just as Steve is walking in from the garage with three boxes in hand. He pauses at the bottom step when he sees her, his eyelashes fluttering ever so slightly as his eyes trace down her dress.

“Definitely a good purchase,” he says, his gaze fixing on the hem of her skirt, and she feels herself smirk as she reaches up to brush her fingers through his hair, drawing his attention back to her face after a long moment.

“We have boxes to go through, Rogers,” she reminds, patting his bicep and fighting off a smirk as she walks around him.

His chuckle follows her out onto the patio, where he already has a glass of iced tea waiting for her on the table and a small bowl of grapes, and it’s ridiculous how this small gesture—something so undoubtedly _Steve_ , that he’s done dozens of times before—makes her heart flutter in her chest. He sets the boxes down by her chair and leans over to kiss her, like he can’t quite help himself. “I’ll go grab the rest if you want to get started,” he says, lips curving into a smirk as he adds, “try not to just throw _everything_ away.”

“It can’t be _that_ important to save if we haven’t needed it yet,” she points out with a smirk of her own.

He tilts his head. “There’s nothing wrong with being a little sentimental. I know the only thing you used to collect in your old apartment was dust, but—”

“ _Alright_ , you ass,” she cuts him off, unable to keep from grinning as she shoves his shoulder, and he laughs as he heads back inside the house.

When she opens the first box, she finds herself shaking her head when she realizes it’s one of hers. She peels away the newspaper from the framed pictures of the Cooper, Lila, and Nathaniel that she’d stuck inside, stacking them onto the table, before turning to the set of Latin textbooks Tony had given to her as a joke for her birthday a few years ago. She hadn’t even cracked one open, and honestly, she doesn’t think she’ll read them even now that she has more time to. Tony wouldn’t care if she donated them, so she leaves them in the box—all but a small paperback thesaurus, where she knows Tony had scrawled into one of the margins: _‘Fallaces sunt rerum species.’ Very clever, Ms. Rushman_.

She really has no use for this damn book, but she finds herself setting it on the table along with the framed pictures of the kids rather than putting it aside to be recycled.

Fuck. Maybe she is a little sentimental.

She sets the first box aside and cuts open the next one, which is obviously one of Steve’s boxes—there are two small canvases tucked inside, a stack of sketchbooks and a tin of acrylic paint tubes, among other things—but what makes her pause is that there’s a folder on top of the pile with the SHIELD logo printed on; an old mission file, weathered at the edges and practically falling apart at the spine. The date stamped at the top corner is from years ago, a few months after Steve had finally taken up Nick’s offer to join, but she can’t remember any significance around it. Especially when she flips it open to skim the debrief inside, detailing a reconnaissance assignment that had come up uneventful.

But, as she flips onto the last page of the mission debrief, she catches sight of ink bleeding through the page from the back. She doesn’t know what she expects when she turns the page over, but she pauses, lips parting as she finds herself staring down at a sketch.

Of a ballerina.

It’s rough, done in pen, and she can tell at certain points where Steve had gone over his own lines again, having not yet decided what to draw. But the figure is unmistakable. The woman is posed in fifth position—legs crossed, toes pointed, arms held over her head—but drawn at an angle, as if being watched from someone off to the side.

Natasha lifts the file up to get a closer look, but something slips out from between the pages behind the drawing, falling onto the table: a white napkin with a faded restaurant logo printed on, and a folded receipt from a diner.

She sets the file down on the table and picks up the diner receipt, unfolding it to find another drawing sketched onto the back in pen. It’s smaller, of course, but almost no less detailed than the sketch he’d done on the file. This one is also of a woman, angled from above, with her long eyelashes closed and her hair sort of falling in her face. Her lips are parted slightly, and she looks— _peaceful_ , as asleep. In fact, she can tell by the angle – and by the strange warmth tugging at her chest – she _knows_ that this woman is sleeping.

She _is_ this woman, sitting on the same side of the booth as Steve, sharing fries and a milkshake only hours after they’d stood together at the edge of a falling city.

Hours after she thought it had been the end, and she was comforted with the thought that, at least she still had Steve by her side. She had Steve with her until the very end.

“Do you remember that?”

She jumps slightly in surprise, too transfixed on the sketches in front of her to notice that Steve had come back with the last of the boxes. He comes to stand beside her, one of his large, warm hands sliding over her shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze as he stares down at the diner receipt in her hands.

“Sokovia?” she asks, her voice soft, though she already knows what the answer is.

He nods, licks his lips as he pulls her close and brushes a kiss to her temple, just because he wants to. “I was surprised that you fell asleep on me that day,” he admits with a touch of amusement in his voice. “You never fall asleep in such an open place. You never even let yourself nap on the couch when we were at Tony’s.”

“Letting your guard down like that takes a lot of trust,” she says as she tips her head to look up at him, lips curving at the corners. “But I was with you.”

His eyelashes flutter slightly, emotion flitting across his eyes, too quick for her to catch, until something akin to awe settles in his gaze as he stares down at her openly, _adoringly_. “Yeah,” he breathes, his thumb absently toying with the thins strap of her sundress. “You looked so peaceful. I’d never seen you so— _young_.”

She knows there’s a quip on the tip of her tongue, a retort about her _actually_ being young in comparison to him, but she can’t quite get it out. Maybe she doesn’t _want_ to. Doesn’t want to make light of this moment, and the strange warmth unfurling inside her chest, making her feel tingly and airy and light. “So, you wanted to draw me?”

He exhales a laugh, hand sliding across her shoulder to cup the back of her neck, his fingers tangling in her hair. “I _always_ want to draw you,” he admits, his voice low and gravelly and husky against her ear as he leans down, reaching across her to pick up the napkin and flip it open. Now that she realizes what she’s looking at—now that she’s made the connection—she recognizes the logo of the dive diner that Tony had made them go to after the dust had barely started to settle in New York. Years ago, at the beginning of everything. The beginning of _them_ , and their quiet taunts and idle touches and lingering glances. She stares down at yet another sketch he’d drawn in pen, on a napkin he must’ve kept when they left the restaurant, because she’s certain she hadn’t seen him drawing when the six of them had been sitting together around that table.

This time, there’s no denying her likeness in the sketch—on this small napkin, in a generic ballpoint pen, he’d captured _her_. Her lips are curled into a slight smirk, her eyes glinting in something mischievous and playful, all at once, and her curls are sort of wild as they fall around her face.

“If you had opened these before,” he tells her, tapping the stack of sketchbooks inside the box with his knuckles, “you would’ve gone running in the other direction.”

She bites the inside of her lip, trying, and _failing_ , to hide her smile. “Oh, I don’t know, Rogers,” she says, setting the receipt aside to wind her arms around his waist, leaning into his. “I’ve never scared that easily.”

“Yeah?” He cradles the back of her head with the hand still in her hair, gently massaging his fingers against her scalp in that slow, teasing way that she _loves._ “You mean if you had opened one of those books and saw yourself sketched on those pages, barely a month after we’d met, you wouldn’t have found it strange?”

“I didn’t say all _that_ ,” she murmurs, letting her voice trail off as he chuckles softly. She splays her fingers across his back, palms pressed flat as she slides them up the strong dips of his muscles, quirking an eyebrow at him.  “But I _was_ there when we thawed you out of the ice, so—that wouldn’t exactly have been our strangest interaction.”

“Good to know,” he laughs gently, dipping down to kiss the middle of her forehead. “I really did try drawing other things. Other people. But I always came back to you.”

She hums, letting her eyes flutter closed as she draws her index finger in nonsensical swirls against his back, through his thin shirt. “That _was_ our thing, after all.”

He draws back just enough to meet her gaze, his grin dimpled, his eyes glinting. “ _Was?_ ”

“If you plan on going anywhere, soldier,” she starts, arching one eyebrow up at him, “you know I’m coming with you.”

His chest rumbles with a laugh as he cups her face, tipping her head up to slant his mouth over hers. She twists the material of his shirt between her fingers, stretches up to meet his kiss as he licks at the seam of her lips. It hardly ever starts off slow with them. They’re too impulsive, too impatient, and they’ve spent too much time waiting.

He groans softly, kissing her harder, deeper, and she lets him guide her back until she’s pressing against the side of the house, his body curving over hers as his hand drops to her thigh. She makes a little sound from her throat, feeling his calloused fingers slide down her leg, grasping her knee and hitching it higher, hooking it around his waist—

Until they hear the front door being unlocked.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Steve murmurs, breathing out a coarse laugh as he pulls away, tilting to peer back into the house as the door is being opened, voices spilling inside.

Natasha exhales a breath as loosens her grip on his shirt, not entirely letting go. “You _had_ to give him a key, didn’t you?”

“Considering he put in our security system, he’d be able to get in no matter what,” he points out, moving the straps of her dress back into place on her shoulders, then he smooths one of his hands down her dress to gently tug at the hem of it. He grins. “And as tempting as it is to hide out here, they’ll find us eventually.”

As if they’d heard him, the voices burst into the kitchen, louder and talking over each other, and a peel of laughter makes Natasha smile widely and wiggle herself out from where Steve had her pressed against the house. Steve’s chuckle follows her into the house as a little girl bounds right for them, exclaiming, “Auntie Nat! Uncle Steve!” as she throws herself at them, confident that Steve will catch her. Which he does, hoisting her up into the air and tossing like a doll her with ease before tucking her against his side.

“Hi, Nikki,” Natasha greets, leaning in to smack a loud kiss against her cheek, in that way that always maker her giggle like crazy. Then she turns, arms already outstretched toward the squirming little bundle in Pepper’s arms. “Hi, baby.”

James bursts into laughter as she hugs him close, his tiny face pressing against her cheek as he tries to squeeze onto her neck with all his might.

She runs her fingers through his soft hair, swipes away a bit of drool from the corner of his mouth as she turns to Pepper with a grin, one eyebrow arched. “How was he?”

“A complete menace,” Tony quips just as Pepper nudges her elbow against his chest and answers, “An angel, as always.” Her eyes, sharp as always, take in the flush still coloring Natasha’s cheek, then slide over to Steve as her eyes sparkle. “We didn’t interrupt, did we?”

“I thought we gave you the night off so there _wouldn’t_ be interruptions,” Tony adds, grinning at them widely as he looks over their shoulders at the opened patio door. His eyebrows shoot up and he clicks his tongue with a shake of his head. “ _Outside_ , Rogers? Really? You get the place to yourselves and you want to do it _outside?_ ”

“Do what?” Nikki asks sweetly, innocently, and Pepper turns a sharp look onto her husband.

“We were cleaning out boxes,” Steve answers easily as he sets her down on top of the kitchen island. “But speaking of outside—how about we head into the city today?”

The girl squeals in excitement, and, because she’s laughing, so is James. Steve turns to catch her knowing smile, winking, and she chuckles as she shakes her head at him. “That sounds perfect,” Pepper chimes in as steps toward Natasha and leans down to kiss James’s cheek. “I’m not ready to say goodbye to this little fella just yet.”

“Still coming up with all the best ideas, aren’t you, Cap?” Tony says as he walks over to Steve, clapping a hand against Steve’s shoulder. Natasha watches as a look passes between them – something familiar, something _knowing_ – and that warmth tugs at her chest again when Tony murmurs, “The simple life, huh?”

“Yeah,” he breathes out with a laugh, glancing over to meet Natasha’s gaze as James squirms in her arms, stretching his arms out toward his dad. “I finally got it.”


End file.
